by Paul Bishop
There was a moment of silence before the rifle cracked. Seconds later, it was followed by another report.
Taki fell out of the tree, an arrow through his head.
“Shoot to kill,” Zeb said.
Silence settled over both groups and no one else managed to find a clear shot. He caught Shawn Montana’s eye and signaled for him to circle through the brush counterclockwise until he acquired a target, then sent Matthew in the opposite direction. The brothers, experienced in stalking game through the swamps and forests of East Texas, disappeared into the foliage. For long seconds, the only sound was the breeze through the trees, the calls of strange birds, and the heffalump trumpeting.
Then, all hell broke loose.
12
Sewell carried a CZ 550 chambered in .375 H&H magnum. He’d killed eight elephants with the gun and was certain he could drop the Biodome version with a shot through the brain. Calmly and quietly, he tracked the mammoth as it nosed about the clearing and swept the ground and the trees with its trunk. He kept his finger off the trigger. If he fired, it would bring Zebulon and his asshole regulators down on their heads—unless there was some mystic screw-up with the sound, which often happened in the Biodome.
Others claimed that the Biodome bent a bullet trajectory so that a clear shot was not always certain. An arms manufacturer had offered Sewell a hundred thousand to test his tracking bullet there. It would record the flight and send the data back in the split second between discharge and impact. He hadn’t had the time and besides, he was a hunter, not a research scientist.
He turned to Dardeniz, but the man was gone.
“Sssst!” he hissed. There was no answer.
It could be that his teammate had simply concealed himself in a better position. Or something might have happened to him.
Two rifle shots rang out and whistled through the trees nearby. Or it could have been a trick of acoustics. Something cat-like bellowed from the woods and made Sewell’s hairs stand on end. Jungle sounds had that effect on him. A firefight erupted. It sounded close by—although in the Biodome, you couldn’t tell—and came from the northwest. He worked toward the fight but remained in the brush for concealment. Something tickled his arm and he brushed away a centipede the size of a banana. A locust careened in and clacked behind his head until he whipped around and caught it in his left hand. It was smooth and dry with an unpleasant parchment sensation. He threw it and it took flight instantly and vanished into the trees.
Dozens of shots clustered and then trailed off to snap sporadically until there was silence. Real silence, he noticed. The fusillade had brought the jungle to a halt. There were no birds, no trumpeting beasts, and not even the sound of the breeze in the trees. Gradually, sounds seeped back into the landscape, starting with crickets although he couldn’t be sure because no one had found out exactly what emitted that sound. The locusts joined in but with a far more discomforting chorus when they clustered overhead and rubbed their legs like fiddles raising a cacophony.
In a rustle of leaves, they took flight and formed a dense, black column that looked like a horizontal tornado as they tore through the jungle. Six-inch mandibles sliced through leaves like a steak knife through lettuce with a grinding, shredding sound. They bunched together in a locust moon and swarmed toward a single spot.
A man cried out. Gunfire erupted and was immediately cut off.
Sewell worked his way as close as he dared and peered out from a slight hummock at a swarming, gleaming chitinous mass, a locust cheese ball with Wee at its center. They spat out pieces of him—a hand, an eye, and a carbon-fiber banana clip. The dense locust moon slowly dissipated until only a dozen of the foot-long insects remained and tramped through the remains. They had torn Wee to pieces and chewed them up. There was nothing human left. Only his carbon fiber bow remained.
He shuddered “You shouldn’t have shot those bugs, mate.”
It didn’t matter that he was no scientist because he knew what had happened. Far from being unintelligent, the locusts had recognized an enemy by its actions. Not only that, they’d pinpointed a specific human being. Sewell needed to warn the others but dared not use his radio for fear of being tracked. They were too close. He looked up. While he knew there were drones up there, he couldn’t see them. He should have had his own up, but he’d brought Bortz with him. His innate resistance to the technology was partly to blame. He had hunted big game in Africa for decades without drones before the arrival of the slime.
Now, he realized that he didn’t even know if Wee had family. He was a last-second hire although his credentials were good. Sewell poked among the remains and found a class ring from Shimer, a small liberal arts college in northwestern Illinois. He stuck it in his pocket. Maybe they had records. It surprised him because as far as he knew, the man had never been in the United States. He’d listed Kenya as his home.
Sewell took the dead man’s .45 and left the bow. The locusts had learned to identify it. He took his clacker out and shook it and the harsh rattle reverberated among the trees. Almost immediately, it was answered by the cry of a bird. He looked up to see one of the hooked-billed monsters circle overhead as if to monitor his movements.
The thought was disconcerting, and he pounded through the brush, leapt over rivulets, and ducked around thorn bushes that would rip the hide off a buffalo. Ten minutes later, he arrived at the convoy, breathing hard and his clothes soaked. He made a quick headcount—Bortz, Dardeniz, Zulu Ken, and Ndugu.
Ndugu looked around. “Where’s Wee?”
“Locusts tore him to pieces. Do not fire on the locusts. They recognized him and singled him out.”
“Sheeeit,” Bortz drawled softly.
“Yeah. Some kind of hive mind.”
Zulu Ken pointed up. A drone hovered overhead, a black disc against the green sky. He hefted his bow and the leader nodded.
He tracked the lazy drone slowly, his bow extended, and let fly. The arrow pierced the mechanical through the center and it plummeted. Ken held it overhead.
“I shall have this stuffed and mounted!”
Bortz held his hand out. “Let me see that.” He examined it. “Israeli.”
Dardeniz tilted his chin. “How do you know?”
The Afrikaner pointed to a tiny label on the bottom. “Product of Israel.”
“So?” Dardeniz said. “Who’s to say it doesn’t belong to the Americans? Or the French?”
“Because,” he explained slowly as if to a child, “the president of the United States signed an executive order that the Defense Department must buy exclusively American, and the Biodome expedition is a Defense operation.”
Dardeniz pounded his chest. “And how am I supposed to know that?”
Bortz looked at him with disdain. “You’re not. That’s why you have me.”
“Listen up,” Sewell said. “Do not fire on any fauna except in self-defense. We’re wasting time playing with those assholes. We’ll go directly after the tusker, drop it, grab the tusks, and run. We have as good a chance of finding it as Zebulon. We’re all merely wandering around in the dark in here.”
Dardeniz spat. “But how will we find it?”
Their leader held a finger to his lips. For long seconds, only the white noise of the jungle sounded around them—locusts, birds, the wind in the trees, and the cry of a monkey. Finally, framed by a split-second of silence on either end, the unmistakable trumpet of an elephant was heard to the northwest.
13
Zeb and LeGac emerged from the jungle holding pistols, separated to circle the clearing, and converged in the middle, where a moist green slime covered the ground. Plants were flattened and tiny scraps of clothing ground into the muck. A compound bow lay beside a crushed locust. Nearby, an injured insect paddled in circles with two legs ripped off. The air smelled of rotting vegetation and acidity.
“Holy shit,” Zeb said.
“What?”
“Don’t you get it? The locusts targeted him. It’s one of Sewell’s, not Sew
ell. He’s never used a bow.”
“What do we do?”
“We regroup.”
He put two fingers to his mouth and blew a hair-raising shriek. They retreated to the vehicles half a klick away.
“We’re gonna stick with the heffalump. Jean, you’re coming with us.”
“Oh, goodie.”
“What’s the plan?” Shawn asked.
“They pulled back or we’d be plucking arrows out of our hair. My guess is they’ll go after the tusks. We have to get there first.”
Toynbee held a finger up. “I have a second heffalump.”
They looked quickly at their screens. A large oblong shape preceded by glowing blue tips dipped its snout into a small lake. The image changed to an aerial view to display its location and that of the original heffalump, which they were already tracking.
“Our heffalump—let’s call him Melvin,” Zeb said. “He’s a klick ahead between us and the lake. We don’t know which one Sewell’s targeted, so we go after ours first. He’s closest. When we get there, establish a defensive perimeter and move with it like a presidential security force.”
Matthew switched the view to Melvin, who ambled casually through the jungle like a parade float. The mammoth stopped, lifted his trunk in a graceful complex arc, and rotated it like a periscope. His trumpet rocked the jungle.
“Y’all better hustle,” Shawn said.
Matthew turned toward the sound. “We know what that means.”
“What?” Zeb said.
“Pussy,” Shawn said.
They took off at a trot and their combat boots splashed in the mud. Shawn and Matthew took the lead, followed by Zeb, Jean, and LeGac. Only Toynbee remained behind to operate the drones. An albino deer leapt across their path like a ghost. Monkeys screamed from trees.
When they reached a broad pond that looked like pea soup, they skirted the southern edge. A green log slid into the water and headed their way like a torpedo.
“Keep running. It can’t catch us,” Zeb said.
“Zeb,” LeGac said. “This is the Biodome!”
He stopped and drew his .45. LeGac was right. He couldn’t assume it was an ordinary African alligator, which could barely sustain thirty-two klicks an hour. How did the Biodome acquire alligators? They were a thousand miles from the nearest river.
The creature scrambled out on ostrich legs. Zeb crouched, held the pistol in both hands, and carefully tracked upward to fire four times. The mutant’s head blew apart, but the body covered another three meters before it collapsed at his feet. He turned and ran and it took him a minute to catch up with his companions. Jean ran with her camera out and snapped pictures like a tourist. Nobody breathed hard, thankfully. Everyone was in shape.
“Where are the bros?” Zeb asked.
LeGac gestured. “They ran on ahead. Those boys can run.”
“Matthew said something about busting broncs.”
“Shit,” their leader muttered. “Let’s go.”
He took the lead and set a steady pace with his rubber soles slapping the moist earth. They came to a rise that looked into a flat valley, a half-klick long swatch of intense green plunked between walls of dense rain forest. Two-thirds of the way up the valley, a monstrous fever tree leaned out over the lush kudzu. Melvin cruised down the middle, leaving a zipper of crushed plants in his wake.
“Toynbee! Focus on that fever tree.”
The drone camera angled up and tracked the big tree. A combat boot protruded below the leaves.
As the elephant passed beneath the overhanging branches, Matthew Montana dropped on his back. The colossus didn’t even notice and Matt gripped the drone for support. With one arm raised rodeo-style, he leaned back and laughed, hanging onto the mechanical with the other. He wrapped his backpack straps around the drone and lay prone. It cut its feed off but left his arms free to fire his AR 15.
Zeb pulled the coach’s whistle from around his neck and blew.
The elephant thrust into the rainforest at the end of the valley and disappeared.
“Matt, turn your body cam on,” the leader said into his throat mic.
The view gyrated wildly until it settled on the jungle, a close-up of elephant hide, and Matt’s hand.
“Just a sec. I’ll clip it to my hat.”
It maintained a forward but somewhat jarred focus from the brim of his hat.
“Where’s Shawn?”
“He’s keeping pace. Don’t worry about Shawn. Where are the poachers?”
The view on their wrists changed to a forest pool, this one blue with a hint of purple and surrounded by kangarats, hyenas, and gazelle. Alligators loafed on floating logs. The second elephant drank from the eastern edge, white birds perched on its head. It stood at two o’clock. A young chimera was wrapped in on itself at eleven, like a swatted spider, its six legs tucked under. Zeb had never seen one in the flesh. He’d only seen them on monitors. They were huge—half the size of an elephant. Nothing was known about their behavior except that every creature endemic to the Biodome had ferocious survival mechanisms.
He adjusted his screen. They were two klicks away. “Shawn, if you reach the pond before your brother, cover that second elephant.”
“Got it,” the man replied.
The three team members trotted single file along the path left by Melvin. When they reached the far end of the valley, they stared into an elephant-sized tunnel that ran straight for twenty meters and eased left to avoid a massive baobab.
“How do these trees grow so fast?” Jean asked. “That baobab looks like it’s a hundred years old.”
A flicker of movement made Zeb stop, throw his hand up, and draw his pistol. A monstrous python slithered down a tree branch by branch. The heavy green loops bowed the limbs with their weight as it draped itself from branch to branch, wound around the thick trunk to the forest floor, and serpentined into the forest.
“I want that.” Jean hissed an awed intake of breath.
“Let’s go.”
They pushed forward through the underbrush while monkeys pelted them with nuts. One bounced off LeGac’s head.
“Ow! Damn monkeys!”
Melvin had felled several trees and it took them a few minutes to move around these to reach the edge of the blue pond. Fifty meters away on the far side, the second elephant raised its trunk and trumpeted like the New York Philharmonic.
With Matthew on his back, Melvin stepped daintily into the water.
Zeb pulled the coach’s whistle from around his neck and blew. Melvin stopped instantly and turned his head from side to side, searching for the source of the sound.
Jean slapped him on the back of his head. “Don’t do that!” she protested.
“Sorry.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I wanted Matthew to know we’re here.”
They watched for long seconds while Melvin sniffed in a great arc before he moved deeper into the lake until he was swimming. Matthew, strapped to his back, peered through the telescope over the elephant’s head.
14
Sewell crouched in the brush and looked over the muzzle of his rifle at the creature that stood knee-deep in the pond and trumpeted to the second one that approached. He squinted through his telescope, saw a merc strapped to the beast’s back, and hunkered down to rest the CZ on a rock that protruded through the furze. The man was still too far away for a clear shot and he also couldn’t risk striking the elephant so far from shore. It was too valuable. If he wounded the beast, it would turn and run. And the sniper on its back—what kind of shot could he get off from a swimming elephant?
He turned his attention to the other animal. A bird in hand was worth two in the bush.
For a clear shot, he would have to go left. He backed out of cover and stood behind a baobab tree.
“Excuse me,” someone said in an American accent.
The poacher whirled and aimed his rifle at a tall, middle-aged man who had stepped from the jungle in khaki drabs, a hunter’s ve
st, a campaign hat, and cavalry boots, carrying a Remington.
“Keep your voice down!” he snapped at the newcomer. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who the hell are you? I have a license.”
“License? What license?”
The man held up a laminated card on a tether around his neck and read. “Big game hunting licensed by the authority of the People’s Republic of China. This authorizes the bearer to bag any two animals in excess of twelve kilograms.”
He laughed. “Get out of here. How’d you get in here?”
“I’m with a licensed expedition. Can you say the same? Who the hell are you, anyway?”
Sewell stared coldly at him and he shrank a little.
“Who’s in charge of this expedition?”
The man turned and put a hand to his mouth. “Hey, Larry!”
Seconds later, a young man with a crew-cut and freckles parted the leaves. He wore jungle camos, a Raiders ball cap, and a backpack and carried a CZ Micro Scorpion.
“I’m Larry Garretson, group leader. Who are you?”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Earning a living, same as you. This is a fully licensed expedition. I have three clients. You’ve met Mr. Suter. Now, answer my question.”
Sewell smiled. They were all the same, these arrogant big game hunters.
Two men emerged from the brush, one a stocky mesomorph with shaved sidewalls and tribal tats, the other an Ichabod Crane type with wavy silver hair. Both were outfitted like great white hunters and carried big bore rifles.
“What’s up?” said the mesomorph.
“This is Weldon Sewell, professional poacher. What are we poaching today, Weldon?”
Sewell squinted. Garretson nodded.
“Oh, yeah. I do my homework, Mr. Sewell. I know who you are.”
Ndugu entered the clearing, his Dragunov at port arms. “’Sup?”
“These gentlemen are out for a pleasant Sunday hunt. They were just leaving.”
“We have as much right to be here as you,” Garretson said.